Your Right to Know

WASHINGTON — By late this summer, the State Department plans to send dozens of additional
diplomatic security agents to high-threat embassies, install millions of dollars of advanced
fire-survival gear and surveillance cameras in those diplomatic posts, and improve training for
employees headed to the riskiest missions.

The price tag for the security improvements put in place after the Sept. 11 attack on the
diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, has reached $1.4 bil-lion to meet the most-urgent needs.
Diplomats and lawmakers say it will take years and billions more dollars to fully carry out the
changes called for by an independent review panel that investigated the assault, which killed four
Americans. The deaths touched off a highly charged political debate about the Obama administration’s
ability to ensure the security of overseas outposts.

The State Department is racing to fulfill the 29 recommendations made by the panel as threats
against U.S. embassies in Egypt, Yemen and other hazardous places have sharply increased in recent
months. But even as it does, the department’s ability to correct the security flaws, the financing
to do it and the review panel itself, led by the veteran diplomat Thomas Pickering, have come under
attack from House Republicans who have seized on the Benghazi issue.

“It remains to be seen how well the State Department implements the board’s recommendations,”
said Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., who leads the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “But for any changes
to succeed, they must embrace responsibility and accountability at senior levels, which hasn’t
happened in this case.”

Democrats who have criticized Republicans for what they say is the politicization of the
Benghazi episode also have vowed to scrutinize the government’s response.

“We need to make sure they’re following through,” said Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the Foreign
Affairs Committee’s ranking Democrat. “We have to make sure there are no future Benghazis.”

Secretary of State John Kerry yesterday outlined the recommendations from the department panel —
officially known as the Accountability Review Board — that have been put in place.

He said that the department has increased training and security personnel, adding Marines to the
diplomatic posts that face the highest threats.

“And we’re making sure that their first responsibility is protecting our people, not just
classified materials,” he said.